So, this afternoon I was heading out to beautiful Milford PA, with my dog Curtis hanging in the back seat (I figure I will take him romping through the woods tomorrow.) Windows open, music blaring, I was enjoying my road trip when I got a voicemail from someone named Andrew at Microsoft. Andrew is involved with the Microsoft Surface support team. He wanted to discuss the negative customer experience I had when I tried to return my Surface RT.
Apparently my post on the subject got the attention of a few people at Microsoft. I figured it did, because someone using an @live.com email address commented, and @live.com is Microsoft, so I wasn’t too surprised to hear from Andrew.
Ah, the power of blogging. You know, if anyone had told me my public kvetching would have gotten the attention of over 500 people, I wouldn’t have believed him. Go figure. (By the way, thank you for dropping by everyone.)
Anyway, Andrew asked me to call him back. So, I did.
Andrew is a nice guy and we had a pleasant conversation. He wanted to apologize, and make sure I had been able to return the Surface (I had.) He also wanted to ask if I could provide any more detail about what happened. I said, well, I pretty much gave everything in my blog post. He said yes, and it was helpful, but we would like to trace it internally, do you have any case numbers? I said nope. But I was able to give him two RMA numbers, two MS Order numbers, and as it turned out, one Case number. So there you go. Andrew was most appreciative.
I also explained to Andrew that the negative experiences I have had with Microsoft involving new products, whether it be the Surface or Office 365, are really obvious things. With Office 365, for example, I had issues because they were constantly changing the install process. And once I had an issue with a known bug. I know it was known because Microsoft’s tech support posted about it in the forums. But they didn’t fix it or provide a warning in the install. This took an incredibly long time for me to resolve, and I actually ended up talking to a pretty high up person at Microsoft that time too.
Similarly, here we had a problem that was very obvious 1. No ability to return online and 2. Several people who didn’t know Microsoft’s policies and gave me incorrect information. As a result, something very simple that never should have happened irritated the heck out of me. Andrew agreed, that just because a product is new, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to have these kinds of problems. He also understood why I would prefer to return things through some online methods as opposed to on the phone, and figured people should be able to choose which they prefer. I agree.
So, thank you for calling me Andrew from Microsoft. I hope that you are able to resolve some of the issues. I appreciated the apology. I’d also appreciate a free Surface Pro. Maybe a discount? Free keyboard? Just saying.